WoW's sub decline: Mirroring the gaming industry as a whole?

So I saw an article with this chart in it. It shows that since 2010 when WoW was at it's peak, amount of money people spend on games and PC games has declined each subsequent year. To me this clearly shows that WoW's decline isn't some crazy "Blizzard is awful, Ghostcrawler is an idiot" but is largely a reflection on the changing preferences of consumers.

I don't know how, in a market like that, anyone would expect WoWs subs to not decline noticeably.

Pc gaming has always been a niche market. However, at Wow's "peak" it happened to one of the only options for MMORPG to play. Now the market has quite a few more game options. And those other games happen to have more user friendly price models. The leading two of which are B2P and Freemium. No one really likes recurring payments.

Canada,we've got freedom too, except we don't pretend to be american when we travel.

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Listen, I hate to be the first to say it in this thread, but, you're most certainly right, or there is certainly a good portion of truth in what you say.
Now, the part I hate. Get ready for a whole raft of ppl who don't get it and will refuse to get it. Here come the following people:

Chicken little (the sky is falling),
I hate life (everything SUCKS),
double pointless (I don't see how this needs a thread....but hey I need to boost my post count)
abstracticon (yes but what will the children think what with the monkey in rubber pants), and
yerrong (no man you've got it ALL wrong, I dunno how and I am going to offer no reasons but you ARE)

As well, it's fair to mention again, and again, every xpac the same damn bunch stop subbing, it's always in asia, and people on this board will always ignore that for some reason.

tldr: holy god man, how DARE you make such perfectly normal, and sensible sense on mmochamp?!?

"There are other sites on the internet designed for people to make friends or relationships. This isn't one" Darsithis Super Moderator
Proof that the mmochamp community can be a bitter and lonely place. What a shame.

The gaming industry as a whole has been declining, but from what I understand PC gaming has seen a recent surge in popularity.

For example: League of Legends is a PC exclusive game that is currently the most played game in the world. Dota 2 is the most popular game Steam has ever seen in its entire history.

Gaming as a whole has declined recently since 2010 for a few reasons. One, between 2006 and 2010 we saw the emergence of the Nintendo Wii, which absolutely dominated the market for quite some time due to its mass appeal. I read an article a while back stating that over half of American households have a Nintendo Wii in them. That's absolutely insane and unheard of. Secondly, this console generation has been stretched longer than any previous console generation by over twice the amount of time. The Xbox 360 kicked off the most recent console generation in 2005, almost 8 years ago. Up until this most recent console generation, companies would be moving on to newer consoles in ~4 years time. Third, console gaming has received a lot of criticism for reskinning the same games multiple times (Call of Duty, Gears of War, etc.) resulting in consumer disappointment in the industry.

PC gaming right now is more popular than it has been in many years thanks to WoW, Steam, LoL, GoG and other titles. It's an environment WoW should be flourishing in, and to be honest, it's an 8 year old game with more than 8 million players subscribed...I'd say that's almost the definition of "flourishing." ;p

I don't want to be mean so I will try to politely point out that you are completely misinterpreting the diagram. The point of the charts (clearly indicated by the title) is to show the decline in traditional game purchases (physical retail purchases). These have been replaced by digital downloads (and other delivery formats). There appears to be a minor (9%) drop in overall video games sales, but a massive (35%) drop in sale by traditional means. The point is not that the video game market is drying up (9% is normal fluctuations I'd say) but that people are not buying CDs/DVD copies of games.

Another thing... this is a real "well no-shit" study that anyone with half a brain could have reasoned on their own.

Now you could say that computer related products tend to get cheaper over time and the market isn't expanding enough to compensate.
But let's be generous again and say that the gaming industry shrunk by 10% between 2010 and 2012
WoW in roughly that same period shrunk by ... 30% 12mil -> 8.3mil30% >> 10% just saying.

Graph 2 shows only physical units sold (dark blue, light blue) no digital download sells (green)
Which makes sense in supporting the author's claim that the balance is shifting in favor of digital over physical.

So no, not mirroring at all, it's diving alot faster.
Try again maybe?

Now you could say that computer related products tend to get cheaper over time and the market isn't expanding enough to compensate.
But let's be generous again and say that the gaming industry shrunk by 10% between 2010 and 2012
WoW in roughly that same period shrunk by ... 30% 12mil -> 8.3mil30% >> 10% just saying.

Graph 2 shows only physical units sold (dark blue, light blue) no digital download sells (green)
Which makes sense in supporting the author's claim that the balance is shifting in favor of digital over physical.

So no, not mirroring at all, it's diving alot faster.
Try again maybe?

Video game sales went down with 25% on a YEARLY basis over the last 2 years...

But ALL mmorpg's except WoW and EvE turned to FREE to play or buy to play over the past 2 years too (in an attempt to survive).

Combine these elements and you'll see that WoW PAID SUBSCRIPTIONS are still doing great compared to the rest of the bunch.

What is great ? Well a revenue of 275 MILLION dollars in the first quarter of 2013 is kinda ... Great.

To be honest with so many games being released 'unfinished' (that's to say they are actually finished but they hold back parts that were popular in the 1st of the series or extra maps etc for the evil that is paid DLC) I am not surprised people are spending less money on them.
Latest example of this as far as I'm concerned is Grid 2. I absolutely love this game but I really could not recommend it to people due to the tracks and cars that are already in the game and shouldn't need to be paid extra for but you do....on top of that any friends that you play with who don't have the DLC stop you being able to use it as long as you are grouped with them :/
On the upside there are so many great indie games being developed that I guess it kind of balances out the pc side of things but consoles with their seemingly endless amnount of sequels and games that are little more than interactive shitty movies does not surprise me that overall game sales are down.

Pdf page 11/14: a total revenue of 275 million dollars for the MMO part. Also see the foot note: all Is WoW revenue since CoD Elite went free to play in late 2012...

Where do you get the figure that video games sales went down 25% over the past two years from?

Again you are distorting the figures, $275 million includes deferred income from MOP box sales the non-GAAP figures which do not include deferred sales are almost $50 million less and most importantly 9% down on the previous year.

Originally Posted by BenBos

CRZ ? You mean the basis for the supreme new virtual realm play. You have to be kidding you still see idiots who are against this brand new and marvellous open world cross realm technique.

The days that hating trolls could complain about CRZ on forums is OVER: for good since the announcement of virtual realms.

---

And "filthy" casuals.

dear Sir ... How do you think you can obtain millions and millions of paying players ? By going hardcore LOL ...

New games cost more the past few years. I don't know about anyone else, but economic crisis or not, 60 dollars is way too much money for the vast majority of games out there IMO (and it's even worse for people in Europe), especially if said game is a single player game with limited replayability. I don't care if it's the best single player experience of all time if it only lasts 10 hours and then there is nothing else to do, I'm going to wait to buy it for 20 bucks. I know they need to make their money but 60 dollars is a fucking ripoff, Starcraft 2 and Skyrim are about the only games I've gotten for that price that I would say I got my money's worth. Now, unless it's something I've really, really anticipated that I know I can get a lot of time and enjoyment out of, I'd much rather spend my 60 dollars on a steam sale picking up anywhere between five and ten *good* titles that might be a few years old (or sometimes quite new) and my money will go that much further.

As a whole, though, gaming is still expanding...the thing is a lot of people are playing them on tablets/facebook and such (it's still gaming) and most of those are free or very cheap.